They issued from the wood, and followed a narrow path, hewn through the rock, above a chasm in which a torrent ran seething. Stones, loosened by their feet, rolled echoing down and plunged into the water. High over the forest they saw the distant snow-covered summits of Mount Rhodope. Julian and Maximus at last reached and entered the mouth of a cave. It was the temple of the Sun-god Mithra, where mysteries, forbidden by the Roman laws, were performed. In this cavern there was no sign of splendour; the bleak walls were engraven with cabalistic signs of Zoroastrian religion, triangles, enlaced circles, winged beasts, and constellations. Here and there the vaulted obscurity was relieved by dull flames of torches or the form of an initiating priest in strange and sweeping robes. Julian was arrayed in the Olympian robe, embroidered with Indian monsters, stars, suns, and hyperborean dragons. He held a flambeau in his right hand. Maximus had acquainted him with the responses to be made to his initiator, and Julian had learned them by heart, although their meaning hitherto was unintelligible to him. With Maximus he went down rock-hewn steps into a long and deep foss. Here the air was already humid and stifling; but to make it more so, overhead a wooden trap-door, riddled with holes like a strainer, was lowered across, from edge to edge. The trampling of hoofs resounded, and the sacrificers placed three black bulls, three white bulls, and a red bull with gilded hoofs and horns on the trap above the two men. Then the initiators, intoning a hymn which mingled with the bellowing of the beasts, felled with axes one bull after another. They fell on their knees and struggled, the wooden framework trembled under their weight, while the farthest vaults of the cavern resounded to the cries of the red bull, which was hailed as the god Mithra. Percolating through the holes in the trap, the blood fell in a hot shower upon the head of Julian. This slaying of the bull consecrated to the Sun was the supreme mystery of the Pagans. Throwing off his outer clothes and standing in his white tunic only, Julian offered head, breast, and all his limbs to the terrible trickling rain. Then Maximus, shaking the torch overhead, cried-- "Let thy soul be steeped in the expiating blood of thy god, the Sun, in the purest blood of the ever radiant heart of thy god, the Sun; let it be cleansed in his morning and in his evening light! Dost thou, O mortal, still hold anything in fear?" "Yes," was the response. "Let thy soul become a parcel of thy god, the Sun! The quenchless and inviolable Mithra takes thee to himself! Dost thou still fear anything, O mortal?" "I fear nothing more on the earth," answered Julian, who was now streaming with blood from head to foot. "I am even as He is!" "Take this crown," said Maximus, placing a wreath of acanthus-leaves on the head of Julian, with the point of his sword. But the catechumen flung the coronal upon the ground with a cry--